I had tried on many different hats, sometimes simultaneously, when I was becoming a young adult. It was fun to shapeshift and discover ways in which I was more than just my parents’ kid. Even today, I tend to defy those who would try to put me in some sort of narrow box. A strong sense of individuality and fluidity has been important to me ever since having been subjected to wearing matching (off-brand) Members Only jackets with my younger brother as a kid.

In many ways and after its near-death experience at the end of the 1970s, Chrysler Corporation had very much reinvented itself in the ’80s. Out went the old, RWD, inefficient, indifferent mindset, and in came some new thinking. With the introduction of the K-Car platform and its subsequent variations, Chrysler’s image had pulled almost a full one-eighty by the time our featured car was introduced – a period when Chrysler seemed like it was on such a roll in doing more with less.

Curbside Classic has already covered most, if not all, of the K-Car platform and all of its spinoffs and offshoots, so this brief essay is not a redux of what’s already been written about (Jason Shafer did a bang-up job here). When I had first seen our featured car around seven or eight years ago, it was the first one I had spotted in a very long time. A near-complete absence of seeing any K-derived Chrysler LeBaron or Dodge 400/600 convertibles for such a long time enabled me with a fresh perspective in taking another look at these cars. Back in December of 2010, it was clear that this 600 had been a long-pampered example up to some recent point, as it was in shockingly great condition. It was as if this car had time-warped from the shoot of an ’80s John Hughes movie set in the wealthy Chicago northshore suburbs.

Once I had gotten over my immediate, almost-but-not-quite car crush on this 600, I started to pay attention to its little details. Why was I so close to desiring this car without fully doing so? Ostensibly, the Chrysler-branded variations of any given platform were to appear and be marketed as the more upscale, “formal” models, while the Dodges were supposed to be seen as the “sporty” versions. (Poor Plymouth, the original Chrysler “Everyman” brand, occasionally got to sit at the table with its Mopar stablemates, but there was to be no K-based Plymouth convertible.) When I looked at this 600, I asked myself: If I was determined to buy a new convertible from ChryCo in 1984, what would make me choose a LeBaron over a 600 (or vice versa), and why?

Phrased another way, what external features of this 600 ES Turbo shout “sporty” in a way that the looks of a similarly-optioned LeBaron wouldn’t? The 600’s “Swiss cheese” wheels (which appear to have been painted black after the fact) look decidedly sportier than wire wheelcovers that most LeBarons might be wearing, but to me, wheels would be easily swappable and aren’t necessarily integral to either car’s design. The chrome “waterfall” grille on the LeBaron had come to be associated with that nameplate and also project a luxury image, but I don’t find the 600’s horizontally-slatted, body-colored grille to be lacking that much in elegance by comparison.

I’ll say that the J-Body Mirada-inspired grille on the 600 also makes me long for an actual, “factory” Mirada convertible – a car that I wish had been built. The quad-headlamp treatment on the 600 makes its narrow, coffin nose-look grille look more like a beak-like proboscis, versus the beautiful visage of the nicely proportioned, dual-headlamped Mirada. There was only so much gingerbread that could be added to this small K-car platform to embellish its basic substance, and even an entry-level Mirada looks (to my eyes) so much dressier than any bejeweled 600.

There are other features and trim-bits that seem to be shared by both the 600 and LeBaron: a stand-up hood ornament, an available deck-lid luggage rack, and nearly full-width taillamps. If I had just arrived in the U.S. from another country around ’84, I probably would have been hard-pressed to tell, between the Dodge and the Chrysler, which was supposed to be the sporty one and which was the luxury variant. I’d love to show one of my young nephews and nieces pictures of both 600 and LeBaron convertibles, in the same color and with similar exterior options, stripped of exterior badges… and have them take the “Pepsi challenge”. That could be a fun activity.

There were about 1,800 of these 600 ES Turbo convertibles sold for an abbreviated, mid-year introduction in ’84, a figure that increased to 5,600 the next year. Prices for the ’84 started at $12,895 (about $30,900 / adjusted for 2018). The fact that the LeBaron convertible consistently outsold the 600 despite its higher prices seems to be one indicator that the angular styling of their shared body did luxury much better than sport. With a turbocharged 2.2L four-cylinder putting out 140-some horsepower in these 2,700-pound cars, they were reasonably fast.

I couldn’t find any vintage reviews to verify 0-60 times of the day, but for a mid-80s car, 140 horses seems like a lot. Did “Dodge boys have more fun“, as those memorable TV spots inquired? Probably a lot more fun than in other convertibles of the day (excepting perhaps the Ford Mustang GT), once your forearms got used to manhandling the steering wheel during torque-steer under hard acceleration.

My ultimate take-away from reflecting on this car isn’t so much that it tried to be too many things at once (efficient, luxurious, and sporty), but rather that its differences from its fraternal Chrysler LeBaron sibling simply weren’t enough to establish a different and separate identity for it. Its generic name didn’t help. Black paint would make most any car look sportier and more menacing, but I wonder if a black finish on a same-year LeBaron convertible, devoid of fake-wood and wire wheel covers, wouldn’t have the same effect.

I like this 600 ES Turbo convertible (and its LeBaron counterpart) for seemingly having upped Chrysler Corporation’s ante and external show of confidence, having seemed like such an underdog for so long. Chrysler’s newfound bravado would eventually be evidenced by genuinely exciting products like the Dodge Viper and Plymouth Prowler. In the meantime, Chrysler’s engineers and marketers earned my respect by putting out turbocharged convertibles that had at least one toe over to genuine desirability. This 600 ES Turbo is fine evidence of Dodge’s effective brand reinvention of the 1980s, even if it differed from its Chrysler LeBaron sibling only in its minor details.

Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.As photographed from between December 2010 and June 2015.

64 Comments

I love this car. I remember when these were new that I liked the Dodge 400 and 600 convertibles better than the LeBaron versions – for just the reason the marketers were thinking. I was in my 20s and the LeBaron seemed like a car for someone closer to 30s or 40s. Had I been in the mood for a convertible at the time, one just like this might have been just the thing.

My problem with these was that I viewed the Turbo as the 80s equivalent of Studebaker’s reliance on the supercharger to wring some reasonable power from a too-small engine. Only here, the too-small engine had only 4 cylinders which was at least two too few for any kind of reasonable smoothness to go along with the power.

That plus these cars’ reputation for epic cowl shake kept them off my list when I was actually ready to buy something.

Epic is an understatement as the owner of a 1985 Lebaron(see pic) i like the ride and love the looks of the car (and people who always give me compliments on it) But the shaking makes it feel like the front end is going to give in one day. It is a really nice cruise mobile!! the Dodge is really nice and i wouldnt mind having one, 2 things make that difficult,1 not too many left around,2 hard to find (if lucky) in as great a shape as that sweet black one. You are right though……….Lebarons are more luxurious looking than the Dodge but the Dodge is sportier looking. And you are right about the name……….Id feel more comfortable and sure saying i own a Lebaron than i would a 600. 600 can be anything or any car, but Lebaron………..different story!!

Really nice car, Eddie! Looking at yours, I remembered that the convertibles were given rear quarter windows for ’84. There was an ’82 or ’83 LeBaron convertible I had seen in the neighborhood maybe four years ago, and it had no rear quarter windows… Just a big, ol’ convertible top and what I’d assume to be nearly nonexistent rear visibility.

I had read about cowl shake, but was never sure exactly what it was. Then I test drove one of these. Looked nice for a 4 year old convertible, but good lord what was going on ahead of the windshield? Even on a smooth road it looked like the front end was arguing with itself about whether to go north, south, east or west.

I never gave these cars any respect, I always simply viewed them as tarted up K cars. From your writeup I glean that they were not terribly more expensive that a fully optioned Aries, but I never considered one when I bought in 1986. I have a fuller appreciation now, thanks to your article.

Perhaps the details differentiating the various K convertibles would have been more meaningful if key parts hadn’t been slapped on so haphazardly. I remember a business trip to Miami early in my career in which I rented a 600 convertible. It was late in the season and the car was the worse for wear, having been thoroughly abused over the previous 6 months. It shook, rattled, suffered from misaligned panel fits and several trim pieces had fallen off and were thrown unceremoniously into the trunk. The front suspension was misaligned, causing the car to pull hard to the right at speed. While pleasant enough when cruising Collins Avenue top down at 25-30 mph, the car turned downright nasty when pressed into freeway duty and became a real handful on I-95.

Other K cars I have driven were tighter and more solidly assembled, but in my mind, they never quite escaped the stigma of being cheap.

I think I posted this picture a while ago, but it’s worth a re-do. This is from our local Dodge dealer (Fair Oaks Dodge in Fairfax, Va.) — I believe it’s from 1982 and these are Dodge 400 convertibles.

I can just feel the Dodge dealer’s excitement to show off these convertibles. “We finally have something fun to display!” And I bet the K-car convertible carried it’s weight, not just in terms of its own sales, but in terms of interest generated by their mere presence.

“Don’t knock the 140 hp kids, that’s all GM could muster from the NON-HO Olds 307.”

Actually, having just come from reading Paul’s write up of the 1986 Ford LTD, and seeing the horsepower figures for the engines available on that car, 140 hp sounds like a lot! At least a lot given the era this car is from. That turbocharger makes all the difference.

Besides the differentiating trim items noted, the 400/600 also had those two vertical, slightly slanted fender cutouts that I think were intended to suggest sportiness, Also, the font used on the 600 ES nameplate on the trunk lid, complete with a horizontal bar below it, were an obvious ripoff of Mercedes-Benz model indicators used at the time.

I never did understand why the former 400 convertible suddenly became a 600 convertible. (probably just “these are 200 better!”)

There was one other feature that differentiated the Lebaron from the 400/600. It was a small, but important one, too (to me, anyway), and that was the instrument cluster. The Lebaron got a very nice, larger, rectangular speedometer with smaller temperature and fuel gauges underneath.

The 400/600, OTOH, got the K-car dash with two square binnacles, one housing the speedometer and the other the fuel gauge. The only change was a lighter color background than the standard K-car. Frankly, it was kind of a chintzy, Iacocca-style manner of cost-cutting. The 400 should have gotten a sporty instrument cluster with a proper set of gauges, including a tachometer.

That was true of the 82 400 and LeBaron, they had silver-tinted standard K-car instruments and a padded top on the dash. In ’83, it was changed to the same big Fuselage-era style rectangular speedometer as on the E-Class and 600. In ’85, it moved to round instruments,

I’m not sure the 400 ever had anything but the silver K-car instruments. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 600 never got the Lebaron cluster, either, but went straight to the round instruments. AFAIK, after the initial 1982 run, the Lebaron stuck with the fuselage-era speedometer until the 2nd generation redo.

Something else that was rather cheapo on the 400 was the use of Aries taillights with chrome bezels.

Joseph Dennis

Posted May 11, 2018 at 5:19 AM

The chrome taillight bezels! I had completely forgotten.

When I was writing this piece, I had forgotten what the first 400s looked like and had to Google it. It had completely slipped my mind that they were K-based, versus the E-Body 600 sedans.

The 400 series originally had a coupe and sedan, all on the standard K-car body and wheelbase. The 600 was launched only as a sedan on the longer-wheelbase E body. Four-door buyers wanted the extra space for their extra money over an Aries (or the prestige of the Chrysler marque), so the 400 sedan was dropped after a year or so; another year after that (after complaints from dealers about the customers thinking the lower number meant a lower series?) the remaining 400 coupe and convertible were rebranded 600.

Chrysler did a much better job differentiating the Plymouth Reliant from the Chrysler Lebaron than they did separating the Aries from the 400, which were both Dodges. It goes a long way to showing the impact that completely different brands can have on shared platforms.

Or maybe it was just that a brougham Reliant was an easier sell than a sporty Aries.

The 400 sedan was very much a brougham itself, pretty much every one I’ve ever seen had the same padded landau top as LeBarons, that spilled over onto the doors and cancelled out the small extra windows (door quarterlights? C’mon, industry insiders/auto-glass people, what are those called?).

Dodge never tried a 400/600 wagon despite the K-car T&C being reasonably popular. Or maybe it’s only in John Hughes movies that I remember seeing so many.

Personally I think they should’ve kept the 400 rather than 600 designation, then the differentiation from an Aries would’ve been easy and memorable. FOUR hundred, FOUR headlights.

rudiger

Posted May 11, 2018 at 11:22 AM

That was the problem with the 400; Chrysler kind of half-assed the brougham part of it. The Lebaron was 100% brougham but the 400 tried to squeeze in some kind of ersatz sport, too, not unlike how the Cordoba-based Charger laid a similar egg. The closest Dodge ever got to having decent brougham-mobiles were the 2nd and 3rd generation Charger SE, along with the Challenger and Dart SE versions. Chrysler had positioned Dodge as a competitor to Pontiac, which was GM’s performance division. It worked well enough when performance was selling. But in the seventies when performance died, Dodge had a tougher time making the transition to luxury with their up-market cars, and that feeling was still prevalent when the 400 showed up. The Aries’ speedometer and taillights didn’t help.

Unlike the Lebaron, I doubt anyone really bought that the 400 was a brougham-mobile. The Aries’ DNA was just too strong. It got a little better when the coupe and convertible were renamed 600 to join the larger 600 sedan and the turbo engine became available.

I always have liked the “shoebox with an attitude” Dodge 400/600 turbo converts. I’d really like to have a black one, with the “pizza wheels” rather than the Daytona’s “swiss cheese” wheels. At the time, Chrysler was riffing off of everyone’s stuff. The pizza and swiss cheese wheels were a variation of Alfa Romeo’s wheel styling and the stand up Pentastar and chrome script on the back of the cars aped Mercedes Benz practice heavily.

The reality was, Lido & Co., were making chicken soup out of chicken sh!t. The K cars were fairly utilitarian and generally sturdy, but they needed some flash, at least before the G body Daytona and Lasers were released. How better to gain some positive notoriety with the fabled “Return of the Convertibles” to the US market?

Having seen most of these FWD K- and L- body variants appear on stage in real time was absolutely fascinating. I’m glad I was able to witness it.

@tonyola: I forgot about that car. I’m kind of surprised that MB didn’t sue them for something… Actually, I thought it was kind of lame that they made an SL clone out of a K-car.

Imagine if in 1992 Hyundai making an obvious copy of a Corvette on the Scoupe platform? Do you think GM would have taken that lying down? It’s one thing for copycats in the Wild, Wild East (China), but another between Western nations and corporations (the true nation).

And what exactly would M-B have grounds to sue for? It never went for sale (the damages required to even make a claim), and it doesn’t share resemblace to the US SL front (again, this damages M-B how? I doubt anything in the Euro front was patented as proprietary for the US), so how does M-B get burned? Because good brand perception was successfully portrayed onto ingrorant buyers? I’m fairly certain these “suckers” knew they counln’t afford any SL, and shopped accordingly.

geozinger

Posted May 10, 2018 at 3:52 PM

Seriously: I was being facetious.

Semi-seriously: Trade dress.

I’m not really arguing the point that “suckers” wouldn’t buy a real SL or this homage, however. And I’m not conversant enough in all of the subtleties of the laws to know for sure if that applies, but I still think it was lame to do this.

cjiguy

Posted May 10, 2018 at 4:17 PM

I apologize, I get your point much better now. I did not pick up on the immediate sarcasm. I just find it strange people deride these particular cars; yes the K’s were “mediocre”, yet at the same time neither Ford or GM saw this niece that was easily tapped. All of a sudden, towards the end of model year 1983, Mustangs, Cavaliers, 2000’s, then the Rivera and Eldorado came out in limited numbers (none of which could claim significant production). Chrysler owned a brief timeframe in that segment, and sales of the J-Body LeBaron only solidified that fact; the JX Sebring ragtops only continued that trend, as they were very successful into the Aughts. Even Toyota’s Solara outlasted the GM and Ford FWD 4-seat ragtops.

geozinger

Posted May 11, 2018 at 3:34 AM

cjiguy: I wish we could use emojis or something similar on this board. I’ll have to stick to the semi-official “/s” to indicate sarcasm.

The Lebaron convertible was one of those ‘catastrophic success’ stories. The story goes that Chrysler finance told Iacocca that the cost of the Lebaron convertible was too high for production. But Iacocca’s instinct told him it was the right thing to do and he overrode finance, cost be damned.

Unfortunately, Iacocca turned out to be right and the Lebaron convertible was a success. I say unfortunate because I suspect that because Iacocca’s instinct turned out to be right in those early years with Chrysler (with even greater success with the minivan), he was then given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. And everyone knows how Iacocca’s instinct on later products wasn’t nearly as solid as it was with the Lebaron convertible and minivan, starting with the Imperial coupe (which Iacocca later tried to disavow when it became clear it would be a failure) and the K-car limousine.

Iaccoca claimed that by the time he came on board at Chrysler, the Imperial was too far along to cancel without taking a big financial hit. Never mind that the hit happened anyway…

rudiger

Posted May 10, 2018 at 3:19 PM

Yeah, the Iacocca story only surfaced after the Imperial bombed. I simply can’t see Lido killing a car like the Imperial; it has brougham-era Iacocca written all over it. In effect, it was the Chrysler version of an old-school Lincoln Mark.

It depends. The regulatory environment in the mid 1970’s was very different than the Reagan-era. Ronnie was one of those folks who insisted on rolling back regulations of all kinds; which sounds oddly familiar these days.

The big concern throughout the 1970’s had been rollover safety standards; part of the reason why the Colonnade cars were no longer hardtops. Another reason I remember hearing was the increasing adoption of air conditioning and moon/sunroofs in cars during that time, which gave you (supposedly) the best of both worlds. Plus all the usual disadvantages of a ‘vert, shaky structure, leaks and incredibly easy to steal.

I’m not really a fan of convertibles, I don’t care for all of the noise and other crap to distract you while driving. But I would like one of these.

I really like that front clip. And while the LeBaron (and most convertibles, actually) seems more of a ladies car, the 600 (especially in triple black like this) definitely has a more masculine appeal. With a swapped in manual and some increase to the boost, it could be a lot of fun.

I seem to remember that the 600ES was actually available with a 5-speed. I can’t imagine there were too many of them out there, but theoretically it was “standard”. I had a strong crush on this car back in its day, and I remember configuring one to my exact tastes, including the “standard” 5-speed.

Fantastic article as always Mr. Dennis! I talk myself out of owning a K variant convertible almost annually as used ones pop up regularly in my locale. As a die hard K car owner through HS and college in the mid to late 90s I have a love for these cars. Never owning anything besides Aries and Reliant sedans/wagons, I really would like to add a K convertible to my driveway. Maybe someday!

I recognize one of maybe two possible places this 600 ES was photographed within the Edgewater neighborhood.. Let’s just say if it’s the Jewel Osco off the Berwin Red Line (which I lived close), I’d be afraid of the top being slashed at some point. The Whole Foods maybe two miles north at Granville? Still sketchy to leave a newer car (ask me how I know). Keep in mind Edgewater IS a preferable and desired neighborhood.

One can miss Chicago’s culture and environment and hate the reality all at the same time. If you aren’t very upwardly mobile, directly living within Chicago is horrible if you love automotive culture and/or drive anything worth real money or can’t waste mass amouths of time. Car ownership is insanely prohibitive.

Not knowing anything about these cars I was wondering what you all may think would be a reasonable offer to make on a 1984 600 that looks to be in vg condition…. According to Carfax it has at least 142000 miles and possible 242000…

Here is my 1984 Dodge 600 sedan. It is stock and I am the second owner. It has been my daily driver for most of the last two years. Unfortunately it does have some serious frame rot hiding out of sight at the jacking points in front of the rear wheel wells. I know I’m late to the comments here, but would love some advice on how to rescue this special car.